labels

Labels is my favorite song off of GZA's Liquid Swords album, if not one my all-time fav GZA song. It goes by pretty fast at just under 3 minutes, but it's packed with some ingenious lyrics (in my humle opinion). If you haven't notice, it's a gimmick song. Every link in the song is hard linked or pipe linked to a record label. A person who doesn't know the names of any record labels might wonder why someone would write such inane nonsensical lyrics; while a savvy music aficionado will recognize at least one record label every other line or so. I found a list on the 'net that had most every major record label and I checked and double checked everything I linked. The only one that stands out to me as out of place is "Central Broadcasting Systems." A German website that when machine translated gave me this:

The two journalists were on the occasion of the signing of a co-operation agreement of the German wave with the publicly legal broadcasting station Central Broadcasting System (CBS -- not identical to the US-American "Columbia Broadcasting System") in Taiwan.

Is the CBS reference referring to CBS the American television giant, or CBS the Chinese radio station conglomerate? The short answer is that he probably meant Columbia and not Central: in January 1988, CBS Records Inc. was acquired by Sony and later become Columbia Records. However I still hold out hope that Central Broadcasting System has released records, as I'd be crushed that someone named The Genius was able to commit such an egregious error.

[RZA]
A lot of people, you know what I'm saying, they be getting misinformed thinking everything is everything, that you could just get yourself a little deal, whatever, you know what I'm saying you gonna get on you gonna get rich. And all these labels be trying to lure us in like spiders, into the web, know what I'm saying. So sometimes people gotta come out and speak up, and let people understand, that you know you gotta read the label you gotta read the label if you don't read the label you might get poisoned.

Sources:
http://www.cbs.com/
http://www.cbs.org.tw/
http://www.gio.gov.tw/info/nation/ge/fcr97/99/5/p54.htm
http://www.sony.co.jp/en/Fun/SH/1-34/h4.html
http://www.taipei.org/teco/cicc/theater/cbs.htm
And for the life of me I can't find that record label list, you'll just have to downvote me for my sins.This writeup (except for the lyrics, which are copyrighted and presented under fair use) is released under the GFDL, version 1.2 or any later version.